


a dreadful sunny day

by princegrantaire



Category: The Libertines
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cemetery, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 15:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6616168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princegrantaire/pseuds/princegrantaire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carl falls in love with Peter, a gravedigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a dreadful sunny day

**Author's Note:**

> title from 'cemetry gates' by the smiths. fic based on [this post](http://cogito-ergo-dumb.tumblr.com/post/142805404807/memeufacturing-me-sliding-a-5-bill-towards-a)

Carl’s mind is, at the best of times, plagued either by thoughts of escape or the daily concern of finding a place to have lunch. Both elude him equally.

It’s nearly the last month of his first year at university and he still hasn’t figured out where the canteen is. As always, life has a tendency to make itself as difficult as possible for Carl.

Friendless and well on his way to failing all his classes (who thought Carl would be capable of studying drama?), a week or two ago he’s started having lunch in a nearby _cemetery_.

It hadn’t started out as a conscious decision; although he’s sure most people wouldn’t put that past him. Carl had merely taken the wrong bus one morning and had ended up in a cemetery he’d never seen before. There had only been a few short steps between that and deciding to have lunch there every day.

For one thing, the absolute silence the cemetery offers him is definitely preferable to having to embarrass himself in front of his drama class for the seventh time that week. He’s almost starting to grow a bit fond of the graves and the grass and the boy he keeps seeing day after day.

The boy seems a bit younger than Carl, though definitely taller, that’s obvious even from a considerable distance. He cuts a somewhat sad figure, all gangly limbs and clothes that are a bit too short for him. Not that Carl’s been watching him or anything like that; it’s been merely coincidence that they’re both there at the same time every day for a week.

He often wonders whether the boy is visiting someone’s grave and whether it’s someone who was once close to him.

It takes Carl exactly two weeks of skipping class and watching the boy to figure out he’s actually a gravedigger. His first thought upon finding that out is the brief desire to get to know him better, which is oddly concerning. Maybe it’s the lack of human interaction, or the inevitable rise and fall of his attempts at being a “trained actor” but Carl finds himself worrying he’s starting to like the cemetery-boy, as he’s started calling him, a bit too much.

The next day Carl actually goes to class, lest anyone think he’s disappeared for good. He even manages to forget about the cemetery-boy for a few days, too busy catching up on assignments and the like.

-

After an extended break, Carl returns to the cemetery one evening when he’s particularly drunk. The place he’s almost started to consider a sort of sanctuary looks significantly different in the dusking sky. All sort of shadows seem to follow Carl around and the silence is almost intimidating, he barely dares to breath.

Which is why, when he feels a cold hand on his shoulder, Carl lets out a high-pitched scream. He spins around quickly and screams again when he sees two wide eyes staring at him. He stumbles back and falls flat on his back.

To his relief it’s just the cemetery boy, holding a shovel and looking alarmed, and not a potential murderer. He helps Carl up and they stare at each other for a few moments. There’s something odd about the boy, as if he’s not all that there, maybe as a result of too many hours spent in no one’s company.

“Kill me with that shovel and bury me, cemetery-boy,” Carl says, winking for good measure. Depressed and drunk is a deadly combination, at least for Carl at this very moment.

Carl closes his eyes, cringing at himself, and a second later runs all the way to the gate. It’s the kind of nightmare Carl expects from himself but even so he hadn’t expected _those_ to be the first words he’d say to the boy he’s been watching for quite a while now.

-

Finding another spot to have lunch becomes Carl’s biggest concern on Monday morning, especially when he, half-asleep, takes the bus to the cemetery out of habit. He can probably still make it to his first class if he hurries and yet, he chooses to enter the cemetery.

Carl can’t remember the last time he hasn’t been utterly baffled his own decisions. The thought floats around his mind a few times as he walks towards the same place he’d seen the boy last night, near a tomb covered in dirty dead flowers.

He spots the boy’s silhouette from quite a distance, still holding onto that shovel. Carl’s never heard his voice and he’s never had a good look at his face in broad daylight but even so he suspects the cemetery-boy sees his job as a rather glorious one. Something grim and necessary elevated to romance in the boy’s mind.

“It’s a good time to be here,” the boy says as Carl approaches, “In between funerals and mourners.”

Carl doesn’t recall ever seeing anyone here besides the boy and once, only once, an older man with an air of profound sadness. He prays the boy won’t mention last night’s disaster.

“Uh, yeah, hi,” he responds with a nod and proceeds to mumble his way through an apology.

“Hey, it’s fine! At least we’ve got something to talk about. I’m Peter, by the way.”

“Carl,” he mutters, secretly bursting with happiness at the thought of finally knowing the cemetery-boy’s name.

There’s something a bit otherworldly about Peter, as if he has lived a few lives before this one. He talks quickly but not nervously, darting from one idea to another with little to no concern for the fact that he and Carl are practically strangers.

They spend a few hours like that, just talking. Never about themselves though, no matter how much Carl wants to know why a boy a year or two younger than him works as a gravedigger or why he sometimes stares off into space when he mentions “Arcadia”.

“So what are you?” Peter asks at one point.

Carl is completely taken aback. _What is he?_

“An…actor?” he tries, sounding tragically unsure.

Carl is quite a lot of things (depressed, broke, possibly in love, prone to mumbling) but he certainly isn’t an actor. As always, he wonders why he ever bothers talking.

“An actor!” Peter practically shouts, “That’s so exciting! Are you preparing for a role? Is that why you’re here every day?”

Carl laughs, Peter’s excitement seems to be contagious.

“Well actually I’m a student but I’m a drama student so it still counts,” Carl explains, making sure not to address the issue of why he’s there every day.

It’s probably not an entirely good idea to confess to someone he’s just met that he’s utterly friendless and an empty cemetery is more welcoming than his own dorm room.

Peter doesn’t seem particularly affected by Carl’s confession, if anything he looks just as delighted as before. A moment later he starts babbling again about some cemetery-related legend he’d read on his lunch break two days ago.

-

Carl remains blissfully unaware of reality for about a month. Going to university, calling his sister, drinking alone; those all take a back seat to Peter. He spends most of his days at the cemetery with Peter and most of his nights in Peter’s bedsit. Carl _thinks_ that, for the first time in years, things are going well.

Peter doesn’t remain a _complete_ mystery for very long. He’s a hoarder of secrets and stories yet well-versed in the art of suddenly letting go when his thoughts get too incomprehensible, charming and alert yet fast asleep, permanently caught up in his dreams. It takes Carl a week to realize all that but the _actual_ facts about Peter are scattered and hard to come by.

Peter has a life outside of being a gravedigger (probably), a sister (definitely) and once considered studying English at university. That and the fact that he considers his chosen profession to be “aesthetically pleasing”, is all Carl knows for certain about him.

In return, Peter finds out everything there is to know about Carl in less than twenty-four hours. Carl’s never been particularly talkative, a result of a childhood spent battling an embarrassing stutter and a life-long lack of friends, but something about Peter gets him talking. He _trusts_ Peter.

Carl is never certain if he’s confusing friendship with love (or the other way around) when he’s with Peter but he takes good care to never question it, after all too many mysteries are seldom a healthy thing and he wouldn’t want to break his own heart too early.

They spend hours upon hours upon hours talking about dusty old worlds and dreams, conversations always sprinkled with little tidbits about the graves they see day after day. Peter seems to have a story for every occasion but all his heroes are a series of contradictions and have suspiciously stark blue eyes, too beautiful to be Carl’s but undeniably inspired by him.

Peter once calls him a “concern”, a bit too morbid (which is a bit rich coming from a _gravedigger_ ) when Carl confesses a deep-seated desire for death. Then again, Peter also calls him “ineffable” once and Carl can’t quite decide which moment marks him more. He stays up late thinking about both, haunting his own apartment.

Carl lives his every moment as if it’s over even as he’s experiencing it and his friendship with Peter isn’t any different, a mirage that evaporates with every word spoken and every hug shared, yet it still doesn’t quite dawn on him until Lucie shows up at his door one morning, looking surprised to see Carl is still decidedly alive.

“Mum’s been calling you for weeks,” is the first thing Lucie says and Carl realizes he hasn’t even _seen_ his phone since last week.

-

Reality slowly intervenes with Carl’s plans and inadvertently or not, one day he just stops showing up at the cemetery. He manages to make it through the year somehow; even if it turns out he’ll have to retake most of his exams the following year.

It’s well into the summer before he dares to venture into the cemetery again. A few weeks with his mother in the commune have been sufficient to assure Carl that he really does want to spend the rest of the summer in London, even if it means not doing much of anything.

Not contacting Peter hadn’t been a conscious choice at first but after a while Carl had simply grown afraid of calling him (let alone seeing him), not entirely sure of how he’d be able to explain his sudden disappearance. Peter, through words alone, had managed to change Carl’s dark and lonely little life but he doubted he’s returned the favor in any way.

-

It’s already dusk when Carl arrives at the cemetery, a bit drunk but not nearly as much as that very first night.

He expects to find Peter and his old world charm and his ability to make a story out of anything, instead he runs straight into someone who might be a werewolf. The man literally has a name tag with the words “Wolfman” written on it in what Carl recognizes to be Peter’s handwriting. Unfortunately, Carl can’t quite bring himself to find any humor in that.

“Pete’s not here,” _Wolfman_ says with a certain amount of anonymous hostility. Carl just nods in an understanding manner and bolts out of there the moment the man looks away.

He can’t help wondering why all his late night visits seem to end like that.

Carl’s next stop is Peter’s bedsit, where he proceeds to spend forty minutes knocking on the door. It feels unavoidable, if Carl’s absence hadn’t triggered this then something else would have.

Carl falls asleep slumped against Peter’s front door, feeling perfectly pathetic.

-

The first thing Carl sees the next morning is a massive white cat.  It takes him several minutes to successfully convince himself the cat isn’t some kind of omen of death but an actual cat.

It’s the hands he remembers, Peter’s hands carrying him inside. He can’t recall anything else but a brief glance confirms that he is indeed in Peter’s bed.

“Biggles,” says a voice from somewhere near the doorway.

It takes Carl three tries to recognize the sound and two more to realize Peter is talking to him. The nickname had been born as soon as Peter had spotted some of the Biggles books in the window of a library back during those blissful first weeks of friendship.

Carl struggles to come up with a reasonable thing to say, with _anything_ to say. There doesn’t seem to be any explanation for his sudden disappearance that won’t make Peter think he simply didn’t want to see him anymore.

“Did you quit being a gravedigger?” he asks instead, suddenly reminded of the man he’d seen at the cemetery last night.

“What? No! But I do have days off, you know.”

The notion hadn’t occurred to Carl at any point.

“So may I ask why you’re here?” Peter sits down on the bed next to Carl. He takes the cat sleeping on Carl’s chest and gently puts it down but not before kissing its nose a few times.

“Well I…realized I need you,” Carl says and it feels like the truth.


End file.
